


Libertines

by k8andrewz



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Introspection, Male-Female Friendship, Pre-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-05
Updated: 2014-04-05
Packaged: 2018-01-18 06:44:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1418744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/k8andrewz/pseuds/k8andrewz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is not so different, the killing of a good man and the killing of a bad man. Death is death. But sex?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Libertines

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'd, written in response to my first viewing of CA:TWS. No explicit spoilers for that, more a reflection on the feel I had for their interactions in it. Set a little before the start of the movie. Possibly the beginning of a series, we'll see. Rating is for language and references to dub and non-con, but none of that explicit or onscreen. Also includes references to past Natasha/Clint and Natasha/Others, and could be read as gen, but the sequels, if they happen, will be more decidedly het.

She has been with libertines and virgins, just as she has played the virgin and the whore, and everything in between. Just as she has killed good men and bad men, innocents and killers, those who deserved to die and those who did nothing more than stand in her way. It is not so different, the killing of a good man and the killing of a bad man. Death is death. But sex?

She watches Steve from across the cargo bay of the transport plane as it lumbers through the clouds toward their third mission together as, if not partners, then a pair. She enjoys fighting at his side. Although she would never hurt Clint's pride by telling him so, she has come to enjoy sparring with Steve slightly more than she does with Clint. Clint has never been afraid to hurt her, and after the briefest of lessons, neither does Steve. Clint is exceptionally trained, with natural, well-honed talent, but he is just a man. Whereas Steve is slightly more than a man, capable of inflicting slightly more pain, and pain is one of the most excellent methods of sharpening one's skills. 

She and Clint have fucked. Not recently. Not since before the Avenger initiative. Their first time was a thing born of boredom and curiosity on her part, on both their parts, really. Their most recent time was, like many of those in between, a thing born of the sort of mission Steve would decline. Sex with someone she trusts is one of the better ways of working an edge back onto the part of her she might, in her more charitable moments, hope to call a soul. Doing what it she does best dulls the thing, and there was a time she didn't care. There was a time she did all she could to grind off whatever part of that they left in her.

From across the cargo bay, Steve looks up from his notebook and offers her a smile, which she mirrors. His smile falters then, and after tucking his yellow pencil behind his ear, he crosses the netted floor and sits beside her, thigh to thigh. He is a good man, with a razor sharp soul, but not, she thought once they met face to face, an innocent. There was a time when she was all but certain of his virginity, but in her estimation, that time has passed, and she wonders what woman it was that did him that courtesy. She wonders if Steve chose the woman or if the woman chose Steve on a day he had grown tired of denying himself that experience. 

The pencil behind his ear is nearly dull, so she plucks it from its nest and uses one of her blades to shave away thin curls of wood and graphite. "Thanks," he says. "I was about to do that. Mechanical pencils are great, but when I'm sketching, these feel more..." She waits for him to find the word. "Right," is what he finally settles upon, although she can see in his downcast eyes that it is not the word that came to him first.

"What were you drawing just now?" she asks, finishing her task and slipping the thing back in place.

"You," he says, glancing up to meet her gaze with a quiet smile.

"Like one of your French girls?" she asks, and ah, there it is. Not only is he an endearingly terrible liar, but also, with his fair complexion, blushing is an easy enough thing to make him do, though not so easy as it once was. This is not, as some like Stark have boldly implied, a direct measure of his inexperience with the vulgar nature of the twenty-first century nearly so much as it is an accident of genetics. It is a tell that the Red Room would have scraped out of him, and then built back up for use on command as a tool. 

"I finally saw that one a few weeks ago. There was a guy in my neighborhood who survived that, you know. My mother knew him."

"Did you ever draw her?" she asks.

The smile she gets isn't as sad as the one she expects. "Of course. The guy died when I was pretty young. We didn't have a name for survivor's guilt back then, but looking back at some of the stuff I heard about him, I think he suffered from that. Would you like to see it?" he asks, brushing his thumb along the edge of the notebook cover. 

"Would you like to show it to me?"

He doesn't do false humility. She has heard him accused of that behind his back, but those who say that are wrong. Humility is as essential to him as his easily-pinked cheeks and more so, she thinks, than the strength and speed with which he was gifted. It is, to hear Steve tell it, if you know how to listen between his words, the reason why he was chosen to receive this gift. 

He lifts the cover and leafs past buildings and faces and gestural, skeletal sketches that capture the essences of strangers and teammates alike. The drawing he stops at is incomplete. Detailed shading evokes the sleek curve of her hair, there is the line of her cheek. And her mouth. Her mouth is rendered with care. "Are you going to finish it?" she asks. 

"Probably," he says, closing the book and tucking it in the bag at his feet. 

In an hour or so, they will walk off of this plane and onto sovereign soil. They will cross a border, maybe two, depending on shifting intelligence, and if all goes according to plan they will rescue three field agents and a handler who are, at this moment, mostly likely being subjected to torture. One of the agents is female, and while what she has read of the woman tells Natasha that the special sort of cruelty she is most likely enduring will not leave her irreparably broken, it will likely haunt her handler the rest of his days. 

It will haunt the woman too, of course, but Natasha has met the handler. He is not entirely green, but what she observed during their brief interaction leads her to believe he has that sort of weakness. It is not the worst sort of weakness to have. Pain that is not yours but instead the pain of someone for whom you care is often the more difficult to bear, from what she has witnessed. It is also an excellent way to sharpen yourself, as long as what lies beneath does not crack. 

After they rescue or recover, they will cross back over the border or borders and, if time allows, Steve will dress in the uniform his military has given him. At an embassy, he will be given yet another piece of chest candy for something he did long ago. He will dance, mostly with elderly women, if what's past is prologue. From what she has observed, he is a fair dancer. With practice, and his reflexes, he could be a good one. 

It is a commonly held belief that skill at dancing reflects skill at fucking, and in her experience, this is sometimes true, but not often enough to be relied upon. Not that the skill of her partners is often an issue. She leads in bed, even when she is leading from beneath. Even when the man or woman she is with think they have seduced a virgin or bedded a whore or raped a petrified piece of unimportant meat. The sex she has had has always been her choice, if you discount the orders that brought her to the bed or alleyway in question. Almost always, anyway. But those times that sharpened and dulled her in equal measure were so long ago as to be irrelevant. 

"Penny for your thoughts," Steve says, nudging her knee with the side of his long thigh. 

"There's this thing called inflation," she drawls.

He chuckles. 

"You and I have never danced," she says to him, gaze forward. 

His laughter ends abruptly. 

"Do you think we ever will?" she continues.

"I'm not a very good dancer," he says, and out of the corner of her eye, she sees that his mind is in some distant place and time. 

She says, casually, "There's only one way to improve."

"Are you coming to that thing they're making me go to?"

"You could have declined."

He shrugs. "Yeah. But I didn't. Are you?"

"I could."

"I'll leave room for you on my dance card. It's pretty formal."

"A dress is easy enough to obtain," she says, already thinking of something with a high neck and a low back. They will make a stunning pair, and be the envy of most who look upon them. 

"Then it's a date. Well, not, I mean. You know what I mean."

She shoots him a glance and offers him one of her kinder smiles. "I do."

"Do you like to dance?" he asks, tentatively.

"I'm good at it."

"I bet. But that's not what I asked."

"Once, my mission was to infiltrate a *corps de ballet*." The worst part of the mission wasn't fucking the self-important choreographer, it was the cocaine she was required to do in order to fit in. It was the eighties. Some of the most tedious sex she's ever had was in the eighties. Steve wouldn't have liked the eighties, but the eighties would have loved him. She tells him none of this but instead adds, "You should see me in tutu."

"But do you like to dance?" he persists. "Normal dancing, I mean."

"Normal dancing?"

"You know, one-on-one."

"Cheek to cheek?"

"Sure."

"With the right partner, sometimes."

"And what makes someone the right partner? For you."

"For me? They're the right partner if I want to dance with them."

"Fine," he says, playing wounded, but playing it so broadly it's clearly a tease. 

"Just because it's simple doesn't mean it's not the truth."

He looks at her for several seconds, then his grin fades, replaced by something softer and dangerously close to pity. That too passes, and with a neutral expression, he says, "You've got a point."

"If it'll make it easier for you, I'll lead."

"Do you like to lead?"

"I'm flexible. And yes. But following does have its pleasures."

The plane hits turbulence and she steadies herself with a hand on his thigh. She leaves it a little longer than strictly necessary, just to see if she can earn herself a blush. His gaze fixes on her hand, but none comes, so eventually, she folds her hands in her lap and leans back, lets her eyes drift shut. Minutes pass in companionable silence, and after a time, she scoots far enough away on the bench to lie on her back, her head on his leg, her own stretched out, ankles crossed. 

He tucks a lock of her hair behind her ear, unnecessarily, then his hand hovers, as if he's not sure where to put it. She captures it and brings it in to land on her stomach, lacing her fingers through his. They stay like that until it's time to descend.


End file.
